Research reveals need for fundamental rethink in the way organisations assess corporate culture

27-Oct-2016

Alderbrooke, the people analytics and executive search
consultancy, has called for businesses to change the way they measure
organisational culture, after its research revealed serious flaws in
traditional cultural measurement techniques. Having conducted five separate
research projects and sampling more than 50,000 business people over a period
of seven years, Alderbrooke has identified the essential components that allow
organisations to accurately measure their culture for the first time.

Amongst its other findings, the research showed that values
and behaviours are intrinsically linked, which means that gauging personal or
organisational values and behaviours in the right way can help businesses to
identify their current culture and even predict future behaviour patterns.

The research also revealed that traditional methods of
measuring and interpreting workforce data must also improve. More in depth
assessments and algorithms that go beyond job-fit results can help companies to
build stronger teams and predict business performance more effectively.

In order to address these issues, Alderbrooke designed a
behavioural analytic engine called CultureScope, the first tool to compare the
perceived culture of an organisation with the behaviours of an individual
employee.

Several organisations are already using CultureScope to
identify their culture, improve individual and team performance, analyse risk,
hire the right talent, facilitate and track cultural change, and more. This
assessment produces results that are unique to each business, looking at the
behavioural traits of an individual against the perceived culture of their
team, the company and even the board members.

The tool is not only industry-agnostic, but also extremely
flexible. It can be easily customised to reflect the cultural values most
relevant to the company’s organisational strategy, which means that any
cultural maintenance, change or integration can be initiated according to the
specific results that CultureScope produces.

Commenting on the findings of the research, Hani Nabeel, talent
and assessment partner at Alderbrooke, said:

“While there is no silver bullet when it comes to changing
an organisation’s culture, we’ve finally made it possible for businesses to
accurately measure it.

“Most tools that claim to measure culture really profile
employee personality, whereas CultureScope measures specific behaviours in a
variety of corporate circumstances. As a result, organisational culture is no
longer an abstract concept relegated to the fringes of executive decision
making. It can now influence the most
important aspects of business growth strategy.”

Kevin Hills, partner, corporate integrity at EY, said:

“The historical ways for measuring culture are very labour
intensive. It therefore can be a very expensive exercise, which unfortunately
means in the context of audit and internal audit it is not really a viable
option. However, we think there is an option to measure culture by deploying
the latest data analytics techniques.

“CultureScope is allowing us to open up these new avenues
and in that sense I think it can be very disruptive. It could help to fundamentally
change the way in which we provide audit services.”